Got the engine in yesterday. Put the Ebay brackets on first, but they seemed to be to wide to even land on the frame mounts. Then I swapped to the small block brackets I had, and with lots of wiggling they came down over the mounts.

There was lot of resistance in the inwards direction after we got the tail of the transmission up on the crossmember, and we couldn't figure out what it was until afterwards. With the 430 setup, the x-member had been modified so the tail of the transmission was resting on a custom bracket about 2" above the surface. So when we laid the tail on the same place with the 454, the transmission came so high it was scraping against the tunnel roof.

Does someone have a picture of a x-member with a TH-400? I'm interested in the mount locations, both for the tranny and member to frame. I have 4 holes on the driver side of the frame. The holes for the TH-400 location of the member should allready be there, right?

There have been so many bachelor parties and weddings this summer I've barely had time to work on the car.

Had a small setback with the cross member which was mangled when someone put in the Buick 430. With the 454 the transmission mount didn't allign with the pad it attaches to. With assistance from my father we got a new pad welded on, so it lines up as it should. For some reason the transmission gets offset slightly to the passenger side. But this is how it ends up with the bolts through the engine mount brackets tightened down, so there isn't much to do about it. Have to see how it looks with the drive shaft in place. Here I had a shorter yoke put on to compensate for the distance reduction.

Passenger side header fit good, but on the driver side it touched the corner of the mount bracket, so I had to dress this down. This took a while as it was a very awkward position to work in. Then I put on new pipes between the headers and the old exhaust system, which was pretty straight forward.

The old transmission cooler lines were of rubber. So I got hold of 5/16" steel lines and routed them to an external cooler I placed in front of the radiator. For a first timer it was quite a challenge to get the bends right, and it got real ugly in the end hehe. But they should work fine. The flares on the end came out pretty good, after a failure at the first try.

Then I moved to the topside and put on the alternator, fan etc. Need to fabricate a bracket for the PS to be able to tighten it. Since the manifold is square bore I have to use an adapter to for my Quadrajet. It is quite thick, so I'm a little anxious when it comes to hood clearance. But with the drop base air filter I've bought, I think it will go clear by the width of a hair.

Hopefully I can get it started the next time I work on it, which will be in three weeks.

Got the beast started this weekend. It took like two days to finish all the small details like the throttle cable bracket, PS-pump bracket etc. Fortunately I got lots of help from my father. Then yesterday it was filled up with all the fluids, primed and ready to start. It fired up right away once fuel got up to the carburetor, but had some nasty backfires at first. Figure this happened because I run without a choke and the engine was cold. Opened the idle mixture screws some and got it idling pretty good after a while.

Topped up the transmission and PS. At this point the engine was getting extremely hot, like up to 260F on the gauge. So we shut it down and startet cleaning the garage. After an hour or so we tried to start it again, but now there was no sign of ignition at all, and the starter turned around slow. Lots of negative thoughts were running around in my head at this point. Could it be that the starter was burnt or engine severly overheated? Well, I decided to let it cool for two more hours and give it a last try before I had to drive back to my place in the north and work.

Then at this last attempt it fired up again. I advanced the ignition to a point where it seemed to run good and went for a short test drive. What a sound! It was getting late, so I had to park the car. Some fine tuning remains, but it seems to be in the ball park. The temperature was steady at 220F while driving which may be a little hot? But I suspect the gauge is reading more than the actual temp. I'll also have to buy a spacer that moves the fan 2" forward and inside the shroud.

I'll record a video next time.

By the way, I had an initial advance of around 5 at idle, with vacuum plugged. Actually the instructions for the engine says to not run vacuum advance at all. Could the addition of full vacuum advance at idle help with the heat problem?

77mali wrote:Are you not supposed to be running a vac advance ever on your motor? I doubt that would cause a major higher temp condition.

Generally, after you get it timed properly, then you'd plug in your vac advance & tweak it if necessary. Don't know if you were running a timing light or not but that would be the best method.

Double check you antifreeze mixture & like you said, the fan is probably a good place to start.

Congrats!

Thanks. Yeah, it says to not use vacuum advance with the distributor I've got:

GM Performance Parts wrote:Start the engine and adjust the initial timing. If using the HEI distributor P/N 93440806 in combination with the454HO or ZZ454 Base Engine, set the ignition timing to 4º before top dead center (BTDC) at 650 rpm with thevacuum advance line to the distributor disconnected and plugged. This setting will produce 26º of total advanceat wide-open throttle (WOT) when using the HEI distributor P/N 93440806. The HEI vacuum advancecanister should remain disconnected. This engine is designed to operate using only the internal centrifugaladvance to achieve the correct timing curve. Rotate the distributor counterclockwise to advance the timing.Rotate the distributor clockwise to retard the timing.

Hmm.. I googled the issue today and it seems that the 4 deg initial timing is nonsense in a passenger car. Should be more like 16 and a 38 in total. This should also remedy the overheating. Got to try it out this weekend.

My builder told me to set initial @ 18* BTDC & go from there. I should double check w/ him about vac advance on this vortec set up just in case. For the short times it did run it sounded great w/ just mechanical advance. That 38* number I think is a with Vac advance- be careful & call the folks you bought it from.

Initial timing as seen on the timing cover should be at 8 degrees BTDC. Vacuum advance doesn't figure into to total timing, mechanical advance does that. Initial timing plus mechanical timing equals total timing. VACUUM only works on the vacuum generated by the engine based on how for you are into the throttle, it DOESN'T contribute to the amount of timing in the total timing. It adds more timing without increasing engine rpms, like mechanical advance does. Total timing requirement is dictated by engine modifications but is usually between 32-36 degrees.

No Mali, the 38 is with the full centrifugal advance in the distributor. Let's say this is maxed out at 3000rpm. So with an initial of 16, another 22 degrees are added by the centrifugal advance for a total of 38 at 3000rpm. With vacuum advance you would probably see 50degrees at 3000rpm when driving with light load (high vacuum condition). When you hit the throttle, like Bruisr writes, vacuum drops, and you're back to 38 degrees which is more optimal for the richer mixture the engine gets at full throttle.

I'll try to aim for a total of 34 for a start. Should the initial be adjusted with the car in Drive?

Well, to continue where I left off I set the initial timing to 16degrees and started the car. Took it for a ride, but since I experienced a lot of carb surging and bogging It was hard to tell if there was a difference. Went back to the garage and stopped the engine. When we tried to crank it again it kicked back, which I didn't realize at the time. Cranked it more and the starter made a terrible noise. Turned out a tooth had broken. I guess that a lot of initial makes sense if the engine is bad enough.. and if you use an ignition start retard. Learning the hard way as usual.

So there wasn't any other thing to do than to buy a new starter. I retarded the initial to 10deg, and now I'm running around 12deg for a total of 34. I cranks slow when hot, so I don't think I'll advance it more than this.

Then there was the carb issue. It pretty much bogged all over the range when hot. Took it apart three times to inspect it, and lowering the float cleaned up the mid range and full throttle pretty good. Part throttle was still horrible. However it was good enough to do the break in procedure with 50% throttle runs etc.

I thought I had messed up something with the rebuild or that the body itself was warped. Although I couldn't find any vacuum leaks, I suspect seepage in the internal passages, because the bores were soaked with fuel. With winter coming up and the car still not being streetable 4 months after I started, I got tired of messing around with the Q-jet and bought an Edelbrock 650 AVS Thunder which runs very good after some calibration. Also, tuning it is a dream, and electric choke rocks!

Regarding the temperature issue I bought an infrared gun to measure the actual temps underhood. Besides the little bypass hose between the manifold and waterpump, the max temp I could find was 194F. This is when the gauge inside shows 220F. So I concluded that the engine was not running hot.

So I'm pretty happy with the project. I expected more torque in the lower rpms, but it really pulls when it revs up. Guess the rear axle ratio has a huge effect on this, so I'm planning to replace it with a 3.42 or 3.73 next year.

Winter is hitting soon here, so this is probably the last weekend I can use the car this year.

Yeah, it was a hard decision to put the Q-jet away. I was hoping it would work right off the bench as I had prepared it according to Cliff's recommendation for that particular engine. The only thing I did overdo was the accelerator pump discharge holes. But it shouldn't cause the overall behavior. I got fed up in the end and was longing to at least test another carb.

This has been a very strangte winter. So in February I was out driving the car as the weather and roads allowed it. Usually I wouldn't consider bringing the car out until late april/may at the earliest.

Started experimenting with more initial advance again after the starter kick back incident last summer. I bumped it up to about 14deg BTDC and it felt like the engine became much more responsive. Next is tweaking the curve with springs for an earlier max out of the total, because it seems like the advance is way to slow. But I don't have a functioning tach and will have to borrow my fathers timing light with integrated tach to do look into this.

As I was backing in to my parking lot the brake pedal suddenly floored out. Thought it was a small hickup, but after another test drive I found myself with no brakes at all, and the warning light in the dash came on. That was the end of my winter adventure.

On thursday I replaced the master cylinder with a new one. Because I reckon that is the problem. Tomorrow I will bleed the brakes and hopefully they will work again. I've also rerouted the heater houses away from the manifold and via the fender instead. That will make the carbruretor cooler, and perhaps it helps with this "overheating" problem i have as well.